P365+1: Week 34: August 19 - August 25, 2012

Another fun week! My initial thought was that not much really went on, but as I glance at the pictures I start thinking ... maybe it was a little busy after all. (Good stuff!)

Sunday's picture is at the resort. Holly moves off to college this week - yikes!
Monday we did a bunch of shopping and went out for dinner.
Tuesday is just a simple snapshot.
Wednesday we went up to the Johnsons and picked up Grant (who stayed at the resort with Mitchell after we all left on Sunday and hung out, did some projects ... and just plain had a good time at the lake),
Thursday Grant's friend Michael came over and ended up staying overnight and they played Minecraft and PS3 well into the wee hours of the morning.
Friday I sat in Lauren's room with her and we talked about school starting soon (middle school - yikes!) and then we got ready to head out of town again!
Saturday ... we were up in Cloquet and Marci and Lauren and I did some school clothes shopping the guys played golf.
What a fun week!

Father/Son Golf Tournament

How's this for timely? These are photos I took TODAY at the end of the Father/Son Golf Tournament that Scott, Grant, Mark and Don were playing in. I scrapped this page in the car on our way home from Gma & Gpa's house. I feel so productive when I scrap pages in the car! :)

What a fun weekend we had! Scott and Don have been playing in this tournament for years now. Mark generally isn't in town, but he was around this year so he played as well. Yay! Grant has never played - he's just learning how to play golf. The guys thought it would be great if Grant would join them in the father/son tournament - and make a new family tradition. Not knowing what he'd think about the idea they asked him and he said right off that he'd like to play. They were so glad! I was so glad. 

After all was said and done I was so happy that Grant enjoyed himself. He had a great time playing 18 holes of golf both Saturday and Sunday. They said his game kept improving as the days went on. I'd be SO HAPPY if Grant took up the game of golf and could play with Scott and Grandpa more regularly! Love it!

You can find a full list of credits for this page here.

Hanging at Grandma & Grandpa's

We were out of town this weekend and had a two and a half hour car ride to our destination (Grandma & Grandpa's). I used my car ride time productively. I scrapped this page on the way up on Friday. It's just a couple of photos from the previous visit to Grandma & Grandpa's over the 4th of July ... just an ordinary day - but fun memories that I'd like to remember (and that I'd like my kiddos to remember) nonetheless!

FYI, for those of you digi scrappers out there, I used a bunch of Splendid Fiins and LivE Designs products for this page. If you'd like to see a full list of credits, click here!

Random January Snapshots (in a Project Life style layout)

I seem to always have a bunch of photos every month that tell a story and that I really enjoy but that don't make it to their own scrapbook page. For every month I plan to put together a couple of pages for my yearly family album to highlight these photos. I used a different "random snapshots" format last year; this year I think I'll try a Project Life style format. I just want to do my best to make sure I'm telling as many of my family's stories as possible! It's always a work in progress!

FYI, I counted ... I used 36 (count 'em 36!!) photos for these pages. I LOVE that!!

FYI, for all these pages I used Becky Higgins' Project Life Cobalt Edition and Template Designs as well as Karla Dudley's Digi Essentials stitching.

And now for a little closer look ...

A lazy summer day ... a cancelled reunion at Bob & Mary's cabin

This day (July 7th) was to have been the 23rd annual Matel family picnic/reunion at Bob & Mary’s cabin. Unfortuntely the picnic was cancelled the day before because Mary was admitted to the hospital with Anaplasmosis (a serious tick borne illness). Since Aaron & Laura & their 12 kids and Lara & Dave & their two kids were still at the cabin, we were invited to come anyway. It’s sad the reunion was cancelled, but we still had a great time visiting with everyone and playing at the lake! (I should mention, Mary spent a few days in the hospital and probably a few weeks recovering, but she's doing fine!) ... It definitely needed to have a scrapbook page!!

Credits are here.

Maggie dearest

I've got to tell you, I love Pinterest! I was inspired by a page I saw in the galleries a while back and I pinned the layout. Then, when I was browsing my Digiscrap Inspiration board tonight - voila ... I've got some great inspiration for a page about our sweet dog. Again ... I love Pinterest!

Credits for this layout are here.

Hanging Frames for my hallway

I created some hanging frames for my hallway and I have to tell you, I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out! It was a pretty simple process. (Love that!) The frames hold 4x4 images so all I needed were some papers, some masks and photos. Easy peasey, huh?! Here was my challenge though ... while I wanted a series of frames in the hall, it always drives me (and my husband) crazy when picture frames are crooked. I thought about it and determined that frames that hang from a ribbon are more likely to hang straight and won't get jarred quite as easily. Well, so far so good ... they haven't moved!

Another thing I wanted was for the pictures to be hung from something more substantial than just a hook. I thought that with the ribbons it would be a nice touch to hang them from an accent knob. Well, could I find any knobs that we could use for this purpose anywhere? Of course not. After thinking about it for a while I decided that drawer pulls would be the answer. Of course drawer pulls aren't designed to hang from a wall, but my darling husband came up with a solution for me. Thanks Scott!

I'm absolutely thrilled with the way the pictures turned out.

In case you're wondering, I created these images using Nancie Rowe Janitz's Polaroid Transfer Masks to mask the photos to the papers and also tried two different sets of paper packs with two different looks. The ones I'm showing you now I created with Nancie's Only Natural papers (which will be coming to the store on Monday!). I also created them using Nancie's Painted Moments papers as well. I loved those as well and printed both so I can swap them out when the mood strikes! With 4x4 prints I was able to print them at Costco for a whopping $3 printing cost. Awesome, huh?!

Credits are here.

P365+1: Week 33: August 12 - August 18, 2012 & our final summer hurrah at the resort

Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy my photo-a-day project? With the template I made it's just so dang quick and easy. I love that I can document so many of the little moments in my family's life this way! You know, really, if it weren't for this project, would I ever really remember the computer games that my daughter and her friend are so into these days? How about the little silly moments, like when Grant pretended to have been hard at work hanging speakers instead of actually sitting on the couch offering occasional advice? The little things are the big things, right?!

These photos are from Week 33 (ending this past Saturday) as well as an extra page to showcase some of the zillion photos I took at the resort this past weekend. What a fun time! I love spending weekends at the lake lounging with the family!

Just a quick note ... if you're contemplating starting a photo a day project, one HUGE piece of advice I can offer you is to keep it simple. Make a template. Buy a template. Whatever works for you. I love the creative outlet scrapbooking gives me, but I also like the more graphic feel of this POTD book and that I don't have to think about anything but photo editing when I'm creating these pages. I get the sense of accomplishment of getting a couple pages done and I'm doing some serious memory-keeping.

Well, I'm off. Gotta run some errands! I haven't taken a photo yet today ... maybe today's photo will be taken at Ikea. Who knows?!

P365+1: Week 33: Camping at Mystery Cave State Park (August 10-12, 2012)

What an awesome weekend we had camping this past weekend. Mystery Cave State Park was in such a fun area. We're all talking about wanting to go back again ... maybe to camp again, maybe for a mother-daughter weekend, or maybe for a long family weekend getaway. Fun times!

Girls Night Out

Kathy was in town for a visit in July. My friend Silvia hosted a girls night out for the women in our old neighborhood play group. Times have really changed - our kids are all getting older (some even going to college now - but not mine yet!), many have moved out of the neighborhood (about 1/2 of us are still here), some have gone back to work, some are attending college ... lots of life changes, but we still enjoy getting together whenever we can. I love that!

Now ... scrap time ... I used a bunch of products from Nancie Rowe Janitz from Jessica Sprague for this page. Her artsy style seemed to be a perfect backdrop for this photo. I really enjoy playing with Nancie's products!

You can see a full list of credits here.

P365+1: Week 32: August 4 - August 1, 2012

Grant flew home from his vacation on last Sunday. It was good to have him home again! I missed him and his silly-ness. The house was quiet without him. Scott was in Las Vegas all week for a work trip (as you can imagine it was really really hot there). The kids and I watched a lot of the Olympics in the evenings this week. I enjoyed that! Then this past weekend (the last couple of days) we went camping with the Johnsons at Mystery State Park in Southern Minnesota. I just downloaded my pictures from this weekend and I've got about a zillion of 'em. I'm just far too tired from camping to put a page together. I'm sitting here with the family putting this past week's pictures together and watching the Olympics closing ceremonies (and trying to stay awake).

Have a fabulous week. When I catch up on some sleep I'll post some pics from our camping trip. It was great fun. We went exploring some caves, visited Amish country, did some hiking (using that word loosely of course - maybe I should just say walking in the woods), grilled our dinner over the fire, etc. etc. Lots of fun stuff, but more about that later!

World's Best Dad: Father's Day traditions at Grand Ole Creamery in St. Paul

It's a family tradition ... every year we celebrate Father's Day by taking Scott for ice cream at Grand Ole Creamery. He always hopes for Butterbrickle. (In case you don't know it, Butterbrickle is a tough flavor to find ... we don't find it very often.) He lucked out again this year - they had it! Yay for Scott! Oma was in town that weekend and we started our day by going to my daughter's softball game ... and then celebrated the game (and Father's Day) with ice cream on a beautiful summer day. ... Minnesota in the summer. what fun!

Now, for just a bit of scrappy talk. Tiffany Tillman is coming out with another template pack tomorrow. Check it out at Design House Digital! I had an opportunity to use one of the templates in the pack and do some scrapping tonight. Fun evening for me! I also used Echo Park's Summertime kit - it was cheerful and summery and perfect for this page.

Now ... off to bed for me. Have a great day/evening!

You can find a full list of credits at my gallery at Jessica Sprague here.

A week with Grandma & Grandpa

For quite a while now the kids have spent a week in the summer with Grandma and Grandpa. It's a week that they really look forward to. Grandma & Grandpa always make sure to take them lots of fun places. It's a great time. This year happened to overlap with the golf invitational so Scott went up mid-week. It was funny, my daughter told him, "You know Dad, this is our week with Grandma and Grandpa. Just because you're up there doesn't mean you should parent us. This is our time." She cracks me up.

They always make lots of fun memories. Maybe that's why they look forward to going every year!

{FYI, for those of you who may have noticed, this is a reposting. I remembered a few more things the kids shared with me about their week with Grandma and Grandpa so I added those memories to the page as well.}

Left page:

Right page:

You can find a full list of credits here.

Gone Sailing - on Lake Michgan

Friends of ours were going on a vacation and spending 10 days sailing on Lake Michigan. My son is close friends with their son (and has sailed with them a few other times) and they asked him to join them for the trip. He was thrilled to join them! He flew out to Chicago (and back) by himself and they took him on their fabulous vacation with them. He had a great time. 

Of course everything I heard about the trip during the time they were gone I learned via text messages from my friend. {By the way, thank you SOOO much for that Kathy! Your daily messages really meant a lot to me.} Apparently my teenage son didn't think of us much and didn't feel the need to communicate with us much during the trip. OK, he did text us once, but it was a short and to the point message. We knew he was in good hands and that he was having a fabulous time ... (and I was getting updates from Kathy), so we were o.k. with that.

In any event, Kathy shared these iPhone photos with me in their absence and I used them to compile this page for my POTD book. What a great time ... and what a lucky kid!

P365+1: Week 31: July 29 - August 3, 2012

What a busy week we had. We spent all of our non work hours this week working on the family room: painting, packing things up, donating almost ALL of our old furniture, cleaning carpets, etc. Like I said, it was really busy. I take credit for doing a lot but Scott by far did the most: he did all the painting and carpet cleaning and taking apart of what needed to be taken apart (and more that I'm probably not remembering at the moment).

I got a call early in the week that our new furniture was in early (yay!) and that I could set up delivery. (We thought it would be another 2 weeks before the furniture arrived so had planned our projects accordingly.) I was offered delivery on Thursday Friday or Saturday and I took Saturday because I knew we had so much to get done. I was thrilled. Scott's response: "Great. I guess sleep is an option." It really did turn into an option - a luxury that he didn't get to have much of this week. To say that he was really busy would be an understatement. Note to Scott: I really do appreciate you!

It all came together, we got done what we needed to get done and I'm absolutely thrilled with the way everything is coming together. I (actually my daughter and I) still have shopping to do. I need to find stuff for the walls. For instance I want to do a gallery wall so I've been scouring my Pinterest boards and have some ideas. It'll get there! What fun!

In addition:
My son was gone all week - actually for 10 days. He had an opportunity to join friends on a 10 day sailing trip on Lake Michigan. (Lucky kid!) He had a fantastic time. Of course being a teenage boy he didn't feel the need to contact me during his time away, but thankfully my friend Kathy texted me with updates and pictures every day. I love technology! Next I'm going to do a page for my POTD book of photos Kathy texted me. {There's always more to be scrapped, right?!}

Making Memories & Stained Glass with Oma

My mother makes beautiful art. She primarily makes stained glass projects but that overflows into so many other things. I've got a bunch of her original art at my house. (I could always use more - hint, hint, wink, wink Mom!). One day over the 4th of July my daughter and I went over to Mom's (Oma's) house and the two of them went about making a beautiful stained glass heart that my daughter now has hanging in her room. My daughter was thrilled. (I took pictures of them working because photography and scrapbooking is my art form!) Not only does my daughter now have a beautiful heart to display in her room, she had a chance to create art and make memories with her Oma, AND she also appreciates more how much work goes into making stained glass art. (Some day I really should post a bunch of photos of some of my Mom's art. It's beautiful!) 

I want to share a story with you as well. Just this week my daughter had a friend over for a sleepover (actually, for a two night sleepover - what fun "girl time!"). I overheard my daughter talking to her friend about what beautiful stained glass her Oma makes. She showed her friend the heart she and her Oma had made and then she asked me if I had photos of some of the things Oma makes. I showed the girls some photos of Oma's art on my laptop and reminded her of some of the various things we have in our house. My daughter was positively GUSHING about how BEAUTIFUL all the stained glass is that Oma makes and how talented her Oma is. {I of course had to call my mom and share this story with her after the girls went off and did something else. I wanted Mom to know how much her art is appreciated!)

OK, so here's my page:

You can find the credits here.

Oh, what the heck ... here's a photo of am amazing stained glass window my mother made for her house. This was the first thing my daughter was gushing about. Isn't it amazing?! One of these days I'll post more photos - but first I have to take more photos of her creations!